5 Powerful Lessons Social Media Marketers Can Learn from Trump. So Great!

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about Donald Trump’s tweets and tweeting behavior (like here and here and here). Dan Rather explains that this is because he is the first “social president,” just like John. F. Kennedy was the first “television president.” They were not the first presidents to use these media, but they were the first to use them effectively. Therefore, the tweeting is newsworthy.

Lucky for us, marketers can learn a thing or two from Trump about how to effectively use social. He’s provided us with both good examples and things to avoid as we build our brands on social media. Here are five of those lessons.

1. Stay on message.

While we’ve seen some rants and raves, Donald does an overall excellent job incorporating his main messages across his twitter feed. For example, we often see various forms of his campaign slogan, Make America Great Again:

Whether or not you agree with his messages, one thing is for sure: Trump’s core messaging is consistent, and it’s easy to see what he stands for by following his feed. Brands should follow suit with their own core messaging.

John Deere does a solid job translating this best practice to the corporate world. The company is committed to those linked to the land, which comes across prominently in their Twitter feed. Their handle often tweets about supporting and engaging in conversation with a variety of different farming groups and associations:

2. Engage, share, reinforce – don’t just talk at people.

Trump loves retweeting people who share his views. Firstly, it makes his followers feel like he’s listening and is interested in their feedback. Secondly, it shows to a wider audience that people like him and believe in what he has to say. And you only have to look at TripAdvisor or Amazon to see how influential positive peer recommendations and reviews can be.

While not all brands have the multimillion-strong following of Donald Trump, engaging with followers and sharing their feedback can still prove very powerful. In a world rife with marketing messages, echoing positive customer comments is an authentic and effective alternative to self-promotion. Sharing’s caring, after all.

Like Trump, Starbuck’s also does a great job of retweeting their followers’ positive feedback, like the following:

The first step of decorating for Christmas is decorating the inside of my belly with this snickerdoodle hot chocolate @Starbucks

3. Make the sentiment clear.

Headlines that affect very strong emotions—whether positive or negative—often get the most engagement. The same can be assumed of tweets. “Power words” also increase engagement. Trump consistently makes the sentiment in his tweets very clear, often adding descriptive exclamations at the end of his tweets.

This post shows both positive sentiment and uses power words (enjoy, great):

.@FoxNews will be re-running "Objectified: Donald Trump," the ratings hit produced by the great Harvey Levin of TMZ, at 8:00 P.M. Enjoy!

4. Check your facts.

While The Donald is great at many things social, this could be considered one of his weak spots. For example, Trump was in Scotland opening a new golf course when the UK voted to leave the EU. He tweeted that Scotland was “…going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back.”

Just arrived in Scotland. Place is going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back. No games!

Delta was also caught and held responsible for sending inaccurate tweets. In this case, the company tweeted a message about the World Cup that was intended to convey a score of 2-1, USA versus Ghana. Unfortunately, Delta was quickly informed that there are, in fact, no giraffes in Ghana (an ironic geography lesson for a company that should know its geography). Be sure to check your photos for accuracy, too.

5. The Internet is forever.

Trump has also been caught deleting contentious tweets in the past. While deleting a social post might remove it from your feed, the Internet never forgets. Fans and followers often screenshot favorite and/or contentious posts that later show up to haunt their authors. And, if enough time has passed before deletion, search engines index the posts. The lesson here? Make sure you want your post to live forever.

Many brands have also made the blunder of sending off offensive, racist, insensitive or otherwise insulting tweets, only to attempt to delete them later. As this article highlights, many of the posts live on to ensure continued embarrassment.

About the Author

Nicole Bump, Director of Content Marketing is responsible for developing the Harte Hanks content strategy, bringing this strategy to life through the editorial board, generating much of the company's content and managing the Harte Hanks social presence. A writer at heart, Nicole also enjoys evaluating ways in which new technologies can enable better content production, distribution and measurement.